This book is fantastic. Not perfect, but still fantastic. It’s all about this girl Elena (PRINCESS NAME! Am I the only one who sees that. Foreshadowing, I swear it must be foreshadowing!) who finds out her dad is a dragon, then he gets killed by another dragon, and then she goes to this hogwarts-like school, but instead of being all about being wizards it’s about becoming a dragonian. A dragonian is a warrior/fighter that, well, rides dragons. And bonds with a dragon. It’s a really cool concept that I was skeptical of at first but then I started and I’m just like “holy crapola this is the bomb.com.” It got me out of my MAJOR book slump and is definitely worth the read.

There were a few problems with this book, the plot being one of them. There was nothing big wrong with the plot except for the fact that the blurb/synopsis promised some things that didn’t really happen. Well one thing really, really bothered me but I don’t know it wasn’t exactly “promised” it’s just that— Okay. “and a long dead sorcerer may be waking up to kill her.” Does that not make you think that the book would spend some time explaining why this “long dead sorcerer”(who isn’t dead by the way) is trying to kill her? But noo there was all of two sentences about her and this sorcerer. And then there was the fact that there was no exciement up until the end. It was like every chapter you expected something big and then you turned the page and its like

And yet…I couldn’t stop reading.

Writing. Two things. One: the transitions weren’t exactly seamless. Two: There was just one time where she used the word “literally” wrong and I end of twitching on the floor like but thats just me being insane. About those transitions… It messed up my sense of time book-wise. One minute it could be Tuesday, the next it could either be next week or Tuesday night. It was kind of confusing and disorientating as well as hard to ignore as it contentiously happened throughout the book. THAT. That was almost enough for me to put the book down. Otherwise I wouldn’t say the writing was amazing, but it wasn’t awful either.

On a scale of 1 to 10 for Elena’s strength as a character, 1 being Bella(Twilight) and 10 being Alex(Covenant Series), Elena is a solid 3 for most of the book and a spike to a 7 at the climax. Elena was always crying, always saying how she was gonna go insane, always questioning everything. I always thought that an ideal main character was a strong one. NOT ELENA. NOT UNTIL THE VERY END. It’s so annoying to read this same thing over and over again: “my lip trembled.” Omigosh. I just wanted to yell at Elena to SUCK IT UP. Not everything is cry worthy. good Lord. Moving on. I want more of Blake. He could have some depth. But he wasn’t really in the book much. Well, not in person. She thought about him non-stop and every glance was so emotional for her… My favorite character would probably be between Sammy and Becky. They’re those kind of insta-besties every girl should have. Extremely talkative, funny, and very supportive they were the glue that held the book together.

And finally the romance. I expected a love triangle. There was no such thing, although I suspect there will be one later on in the series. Prince Charming aka Prince Lucian Mckensie. Literally the perfect guy and Elena fell for him head over heels. Like, the have barely dated at all and they’re already in love and Elena “can’t imagine life without him.” Can you say clingy? I mean I can understand if after a while you felt that way, but this was a insta-love kind of thing and I absolutely hate insta-love. That rant aside the romance was super sweet and incredibly gushy and I loved it, I just wish it hadn’t happened so quickly.

SUMMARY OF REVIEW(In case you don’t actually feel like reading the review):
Writing: 3 out of 5
Plot: 4 out of 5
characters: 4 out of 5
Romance: 4 out of 5
Overall: 4 out of 5
PG-13 Sex, maidens, and virginity is mentioned often throughout the book

As you can see, she loved it, still she put a couple of points in there that others would think is harsh. To be honest with you, this one was one of my best reviews I’ve ever got. She told me exactly what she thought about it. Am I upset?
Not one single bit.

You want to know why?

In the first stages of when I released my baby that I worked on for almost three years, it was hard getting negative feedback. Some say it was a ripoff of Harry Potter, others said they simple didn’t get the story, the title nothing. I promise you, I don’t get GREAT JOB comments that much, but I do get a lot of reviews telling me where I go wrong.

So how did I deal with this?

You don’t need to have a skeleton made of steel or organs of metal, nor a elephant skin. It’s all about your attitude. I know it sounds eezy-peezy, it’s not. You literally need to change your attitude to these little buggers knows as reviews.
I was so livid in the beginning if somebody didn’t get my book, I worked so hard on it, and not to mention time spending away from my family and friends. The research went on for months and months to make everything realistic. And I was told if you work hard, it pays off. So as you can imagine, I didn’t cope so well with reviews.

Until……

I sat down one day after I finished reading a horrible review. i thought by myself, what is it that makes me so upset. This is just another being’s opinion. If she didn’t get, well maybe I should go back to what she said didn’t make sense and try to read it through a completely different perspective. Maybe this person got something here. If not, well then you move on. You are the author, you decide what is important for your novel and if you should make changes to it or not. Your book still sell’s even with all the horrible reviews. If people like the cover and they like the first couple of pages they read, they will buy it, no matter what Suzie or John said. (Please note this is random names and got nothing to do with my reviews.)

You need to start changing your attitude toward reviews. They are there to help you, and if you did an amazing job and you just get GREAT JOB WELL DONE, Well good for you, but…. lets go look at the blog busters.
Twilight, got so many ones and two’s and those people were harsh in their reviews. An amazing story, but not everyone loved it.
Mortal Instruments: The same thing. I actually read a review where one of her no-fans ripped her as Casandra apart, not to mention what she did with the book. It was horrible as an author to read that.
Last our favorite: Harry Potter: Although J.k Rowling has one of the highest scores on Goodreads and Amazon. She still got those ones and two’s. Although a fantastic series, not everybody loved it.

So I would really be worried if everyone give me Good Work, job well done, wouldn’t you agree.

Do’s and Don’t as an author when it comes to reviews.

Goodreads have a really nice page on how authors needed to deal with reviews.
According to Goodreads, you should just stay away from them. Don’t interact with your readers at all. Especially with something they didn’t like. There are wars going on with reviews on Goodreads. Authors that think they should come up for another author and attack that poor reviewer with words I’ve never even heard of.
You have no idea what you are doing to that poor soul and most important to yourself.

All i know, this author that dismantle that girl on goodreads, I used to be a huge fan because he got represented by my favorite Agent and that is why I picked up one of his novels and read it. A really good story and I couldn’t wait for another one from him.

His attitude towards a review that wasn’t even about his own work, was disgusting. I used to follow the agent on Twitter, and she’s not even on twitter anymore because of this entire thing and I think he lost a lot of fans because of how he acted. Because bloggers and reviewers stick together.

Why did they hate it so much that they feel they needed to retweet the entire affair, blog about it etc. was because with one simply reply, you take away a reviewers voice, you take away their opinion, you take away everything they got to say about your novel, and I promise you they won’t buy another single one of your novels.

The author and agent did step in after a while, but seriously, she lost some readers that didn’t want to read her book anymore, just because of this one little mishap that she didn’t even participate in.

This is a worst case scenario, and there are ways to answer your readers questions, but with explaining everything they didn’t like, is not one of them. You can create a book discussion and talk about everything about your book. You get a different type of insight to your work through these little discussions, and I think every author should do it. It’s really fun, I participated in some of them and I started to see some of the things I didn’t like a bit clearer as the author spoke about it. I’m not saying that you will change your mind if you do participated in a discussion about a book you didn’t like, but you do get a bit more perception from the author’s side.

I did another little research on goodreads reviews. You notice how many ratings there are without any opinions. It’s because of this little thing that I’ve been going on about.
Readers don’t feel the need to write a review anymore because they are scared of “hurting” the authors feelings so they would just give a one or a two, without telling you why.

I would rather get a one or a two, explaining to me what they didn’t like, then a one without any explanation of why they didn’t love it as much as Suzie or Johnny did.

I’m sure you do see where I’m going with this. You need to change your attitude toward reviews. Some of them are horrible, but as horrible as they are, they do have something constructive you can use in order to change your next book and the one after that.
Don’t look at negative reviews as bad, readers being nasty, etc.

See what you can learn from them, and move on. Don’t start a war, don’t even press that like button (which I’m so guilty off). Because all of them hurt you at the end.

I hope this entry will help some of the debut authors like myself, and learn from the big block busters. Not everyone will love your book!!!!! I’m sure if Stephanie Meyer or J.k Rowling replied on every bad review they got, they wouldn’t have been where they are at the moment.

Write for the ones that can’t wait to read your next novel. You might be surprised how many of the ones that gave you harsh reviews actually end up buying the next one, just because.
So go think about it. Start loving reviews.